Love and Addiction: 4. "Love" as an Addiction - 0 views
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a human relationship can be equivalent psychologically to a drug addiction.
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Chein, Winick, and other observers interpret drugs to be a kind of substitute for human ties. In this sense, addictive love is even more directly linked to what are recognized to be the sources of addiction than is drug dependency.
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Freud noted important parallels between love and another psychologically compelling process—hypnotism.
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From being in love to hypnosis is evidently only a short step.
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Love is an ideal vehicle for addiction because it can so exclusively claim a person's consciousness.
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Someone who is dissatisfied with himself or his situation can discover in such a relationship the most encompassing substitute for self-contentment and the effort required to attain it.
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When a constant exposure to something as necessary in order to make life bearable, an addiction has been brought about, however romantic the trappings. The ever-present danger of withdrawal creates an ever-present craving.
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Since the person who addicts himself to a lover has essentially the same feelings of inadequacy as the drug addict, why should such an individual choose another person, rather than a drug, for the object of his addiction
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found that sexual relationships in the lower class tend not to involve as great a degree of life-sharing.
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"The lower class person . . . is less dependent on people, and more oriented toward those gratifications which can be achieved without complicated cooperation of other human beings."
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The latter can be defined as the need to cling to one human object for love and support. That object may not even be a true person, but only a conception of a person.
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When people are economically comfortable but still sense a large deficiency in their lives, their yearnings are bound to be more existential than material. That is, these yearnings are tied into their basic conception of and feelings about themselves
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A person feeling this inner emptiness must strive to fill it. In relationships, this can only be done by subsuming someone else's being inside yourself, or by allowing someone else to subsume you.
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The result is a full-fledged addiction, where each partner draws the other back at any sign of a loosening of the bonds that hold them together.
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The relationship was an addiction. F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sheilah Graham sealed themselves off from the outside world by neglecting their work and by dropping all their other personal relationships in Hollywood.
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The belief which underlay this feeling—and all of the relationship—was expressed by Graham when she said that "my living began when he arrived." If there is a need to participate in every aspect of another's life, its conclusive form is the complete control of or reliance on another, so that one person does not exist without the other's being there, too. This is the essential similarity to drug addiction, where a person feels he is living only when he is on the drug. The ultimate statement of the desire to be consumed by love is in the last passage quoted from Graham, where she wanted to crawl into Scott's mind, lose her consciousness in his, and form one human entity out of two incomplete beings.
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The sadistic person is as dependent on the submissive person as the latter is on the former;
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The difference is only that the sadistic person commands, exploits, hurts, humiliates, and that the masochistic person is commanded, exploited, hurt, humiliated. This is a considerable difference in a realistic sense; in a deeper emotional sense, the difference is not so great as that which they both have in common: fusion without integrity.
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Above all else, these extreme emotional reactions conclusively establish that the relationship was an addiction. All along, the lovers' actions toward each other were dictated by their own needs. Therefore, when their connection was severed—even temporarily—they had no basis on which to relate. Each was incapable of respecting, or even conceiving of, the other in his or her own terms, as continuing to live his or her own life. It was impossible for either to be concerned about the other's well-being; if the one lover wasn't there to satisfy the other's needs, then he or she ceased to exist.
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Because an addiction is sought only for the total experience it provides, it can only be accepted emotionally in that form.
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Love is the opposite of interpersonal addiction. A love relationship is based on a desire to grow and to expand oneself through living, and a desire for one's partner to do the same.
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Anything which contributes positively to a loved one's experience is welcomed, partly because it enriches the loved one for his own sake, and partly because it makes him a more stimulating companion in life.
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If two people hope to realize fully their potential as human beings—both together and apart—then they create an intimacy which includes, along with trust and sharing, hope, independence, openness, adventurousness, and love.
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If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow men, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism.
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the tendency to regard social partners as commodities. People who show this orientation "fall in love when they feel they have found the best object available on the market, considering the limitations of their own exchange values."
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Fromm therefore stresses that the respect inherent in all love requires a lover to think, "I want the loved person to grow and unfold for his own sake, and in his own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me."
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An independent, open person exploring life seriously will instinctively (if not consciously) consider whether someone has anything of substance to add to his or her existence.
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Criteria For Love Vs. Addiction
